Story:

In an old 90's computer game, Caine, an AI ringmaster that takes the form of chattering teeth with eyes and a body (Alex Rochon) and his assistant Bubble (Gooseworx) welcomes the viewers to the Amazing Digital Circus. The rest of the characters are introduced through the theme song:

• Gangle, a depressed and timid girl made of red ribbons and a drama mask (Marissa Lenti)
• Zooble, a moody person made out of mix & match parts (Ashley Nichols)
• Kinger, a rather kooky person who takes the form of a white king chess piece wearing a purple robe (Sean Chiplock)
• Ragatha, an optimistic and friendly Raggedy Ann doll (Amanda Hufford)
• Jax, a mischievous and rebellious purple rabbit in red overalls (Michael Kovach)
• Kaufmo, a cartoonish clown who is absent from the theme song

As the theme song progresses, a new jester character (Lizzie Freeman) suddenly appears in the Circus and disrupts the song. The jester begins panicking as she attempts to take off her headset, revealing that she is a human from the outside world. The others inform her that she cannot leave, revealing that they are also humans that teleported to the Circus, with Kinger the one who stayed the longest. Still fearful, confused and desiring to leave, Caine starts introducing the new jester to the areas of the Digital Circus: the Tent where everyone lives, the Grounds for adventures outside of the tent, and the "mysterious" Void, which Caine advises her to not venture to. The jester briefly notices an exit door and inquires about it, but Caine brushes it off as a "digital hallucination".

Caine asks the jester for her name, and she panics as she realizes she can't remember it. Caine reveals that all new arrivals forget their name, and uses a slot machine to grant her the new name Pomni. With the introduction done, Caine declares a brand new in-house adventure for Pomni and the rest of the gang. He instructs them to gather the Gloinks, small critters that stick to anything they bump into and have infested the tent.

Not long after the adventure starts, Zooble decides to quit it early but gets disjointed and captured by the Gloinks. Ragatha suggests to check on Kaufmo with Pomni since he wasn't at the theme song, but Kinger remarks he might have gone insane as he was rambling about an exit like Pomni. Jax proclaims that he, Ragatha and Pomni will go check on Kaufmo while Kinger and Gangle help save Zooble. Ragatha introduces Pomni to their dormitory and quarters where they sleep, but remarks that since they aren't human, they don't need human essentials to live. When Pomni asks why no one has tried to escape, Ragatha tells her that most people who try to leave the Circus eventually go insane, in which case "something really bad" happens to them.

Reaching Kaufmo's room, Ragatha rings his doorbell, but he doesn't answer. Jax uses a key to open the door, and the three discover that Kaufmo has horribly mutated into a monstrous black mass creature with rainbow eyes. Jax runs away, leaving the two girls at the mercy of the creature. Ragatha explains to a horrified and confused Pomni that Kaufmo has "abstracted", the just hinted at dire result of someone in the Circus reaching their breaking point. Kaufmo attacks Ragatha and causes her to start glitching out, and Pomni's hand begins to glitch when she reaches out to help. Kaufmo chases after Pomni before crashing through the railings and chasing a Gloink next, allowing Pomni to reunite with Ragatha. Jax meets up with Kinger and Gangle, who have found where Zooble has gone to: a giant hole in the ground. Jax lies about Kaufmo's current state and goes with the other two through the hole. Inside, all three encounter the Gloink Queen (Elsie Lovelock), who is being fed the objects taken by the Gloinks. Kinger also finds Zooble's head, but fails at saving it from being devoured by the queen.

Pomni meets with a glitching Ragatha, who instructs her to get Caine in order to help them. She goes off to find him, opening a bunch of doors leading to random and surreal looking rooms while avoiding Kaufmo. Pomni comes across the exit door she saw earlier and enters it, only to find herself trapped in an almost realistic looking office labyrinth that she gets lost in. Back at the nest, the Gloink Queen expresses her plans to turn anything and everything into all Gloinks like herself and her kin when Kaufmo crashes down and beats the crap out of her, releasing Zooble and allowing the other characters to leave. Meanwhile, Pomni is still trying to find the end of the labyrinth, at one point coming across an old computer with a VR headset next to it. She goes through a door, with the logo C&A marked above it, and is led into the Void, falling into a trance state.

Caine and Bubble are at a restaurant when Caine sees on his Wacky Watch that someone has gotten to the Void, quickly rushing to take Pomni back to the tent. He sees that Kaufmo has abstracted and casually drops him into the "Cellar", which is populated by other abstracted creatures. Caine reverts Ragatha and Pomni's glitched states back to normal and apologizes for lying about the exit door, revealing that he made it because many people were asking for one but could not finish it in time. As a reward for finishing their adventure, Bubble has made them a feast for them to feel more like they're at home. Pomni, still in awe and disbelief from today, stares blankly in shock before cracking a broken smile as she sits on the dinner table with the rest. The shot zooms out of the tent into the void and beyond, before finally reaching the old computer that Pomni had seen before.

The Amazing Digital Circus pilot has examples of:

• Accidental Hero:
  • In his Abstracted state, Kaufmo is mainly just rampages around and destroying anything in sight, but said rampaging causes him to crash down into the Gloinks' nest and attack the Gloink Queen, beating her to a pulp and causing her to vomit up Zooble.
  • Pomni finds Caine like Ragatha told her to do, and he indeed fixes everything, but only because Pomni alerted him when she stumbled into the Void. She was otherwise trying to escape the Circus and was ready to leave Ragatha to her fate again.
• All for Nothing:
  • Caine set up the "Gather the Gloinks" adventure so Pomni could get settled into the status quo, but Ragatha decides to introduce her to Kaufmo, leaving Kinger and Gangle to do the adventure for them. Pomni never actually engages with the adventure, being more preoccupied with a rampaging Kaufmo, a glitching Ragatha, and the exit door. Zooble notes this after the Gloink Queen is defeated.
    Zooble: Wait, Pomni's not even here? Wasn't this whole thing for her?
  • Pomni and Kaufmo's respective searches for the exit are shown to have been pointless from the start when Caine reveals it wasn't even a real exit. It's especially tragic in Kaufmo's case, where he permanently drove himself mad and abstracted over it.
  • Kaufmo went mad and abstracted due to his desperation to escape, driven by the exit door he kept seeing but could never reach. At the end of the pilot it's revealed it was futile anyways because the door wasn't even a real exit.
• Amusing Injuries: While searching for Caine so he can fix up Ragatha after she gets attacked by the abstracted Kaufmo, she gets socked by a boxing glove twice. From the same door too.
• And Here He Comes Now: Jax casually replies to the Gloink Queen "I'm just here to hide from the-" right before the abstracted Kaufmo (who Jax was fleeing from earlier) crashes through the cave ceiling and onto the Gloink Queen.
• Bait-and-Switch: A bowling ball sends Kinger and Gangle rolling down a slide, and some bowling pins appear onscreen... only for the bowling ball to miss the pins, which Kinger and Gangle knock out instead (with Jax landing softly and kicking the last pin away).
• Bait the Dog: As Jax, Zooble, Gangle, and Kinger leave the Gloink Queen's domain, Jax lets Gangle go first, but then wonders why the heck he should do that and pushes her aside so he can enter the escalator.
• Big Ball of Violence: Happens when Zooble gets attacked and pulled apart by the gloinks.
• Blatant Lies: Jax assures Gangle that Kaufmo is "fine" as Kaufmo's abstracted form gives the Gloink Queen a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Broken Smile: At the ending feast, Pomni makes a grimacing, pained smile after it finally sinks in that she's trapped in the digital world forever.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • When Pomni asks how to leave the circus, Jax interrupts Ragatha's attempts to sugarcoat the situation with a simple answer: "You can't." Zooble scolds Jax, but concedes that he's right.
  • While saddened to see Kaufmo abstract, Zooble tells Kinger they always figured he would be the one to abstract next rather than Kaufmo. Kinger just thanks Zooble as if their words were a compliment.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: After Pomni briefly swears during her initial paranoid questions upon entering, Caine explains that all swearing is censored because the Circus is a family-friendly place "for all ages". In response, Pomni quickly launches into a tirade of censored curses, presumably to test it, before she finally gets out a simple "Oh my God".
• Crash-Into Hello: Pomni does this at the beginning of the episode, as she accidentally bumps into Jax, causing him to fall on Kingler and Gangle (breaking her comedy mask in the process), because the former was too distracted by the surrounding of the Digital Circus to notice him. To emphasize the scene, the theme song slows down to an halt as it happens.
• Contrived Coincidence: Pomni’s introduction as a “new player” conveniently happens in the middle of the theme’s song, which also happens to be the same day Kaufmo doesn’t show up in the intro, and that’s because the latter reached their Despair Event Horizon and became “abstracted” (a.k.a. a mindless, multi-eyed, black monster). Talk about “bad timing”.
• Cuckoo Finger Twirl: When Jax jokingly points out that Kinger is "craaaazy!" to Pomni upon introducing her to the Circus, he twirls his finger next to his head in reference to said craziness. He also does this when accusing Pomni of "having a jumpstart in losing her mind."
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Kinger refuses to go see Kaufmo because he believes he's going insane after claiming to see an exit, and thinks Pomni's going insane for the same reasons. As Kaufmo's abstraction and Pomni's later Sanity Slippage after going through the fake exit door show, Kinger wasn't far off in his assessment.
• Curse Cut Short: Zooble's head gets Swallowed Whole by the Gloink Queen right as they were about to call Kinger a "motherfucker".
• Damsel in Distress: Or is it Distressed Dude? Either way, Zooble spends the middle portion of the pilot being in the hands of the Gloinks and their queen, with the rest of the cast having to save them.
• Dark Reprise: The ending of the Pilot has the last minute of the episode play a darker remix of the show's main theme that played at the beginning of the episode. This happens right after Pomni learns that the exit door she and Kaufmo were searching for was just a fake made by Caine and that Kaufmo "abstracted" over a false hope of escape before being put in the cellar of the circus by Caine. As the music plays over the other residents talking about how they can only feel the sensation of eating, the shot zooms in on Pomni until she and the others are all at the dinner table and she looks at the food. The very next shot shows the others conversing with each other as the camera zooms in on Pomni again with her now sporting a Broken Smile as she breaks down and finally realized that she wasn't dreaming and that she has entered a nightmarish experience.
• Delayed Reaction: Kinger fails to notice Gangle standing right next to him until a few minutes later, screams at Jax's arrival a few seconds after he greets him and Gangle, and doesn't react to Gangle informing him that they're in the Gloink nest for a few seconds before screaming, assuming this isn’t him somehow being startled by Gangle's presence again.
• Dirty Coward: Jax abandons Pomni and Ragatha almost immediately after they open Kaufmo's room and find out he's abstracted. Then, he pushes Kinger and Gangle down the Gloink hole and joins them in the Gloink lair solely so he could stay as far away as possible from Kaufmo.
• Disappointed by the Motive: Caine casually admits he was just hiding the exit door, despite it not working, because he was too proud to show an unfinished project. Pomni is clearly displeased that was why she got her hopes up.
• Dissonant Serenity: Although Jax initially looks surprised to find out Kaufmo abstracted once he opens his room, he goes straight back into his usual laidback behavior before running away. Then, when Kaufmo crashes into the Gloinks' nest, he straight up admits to Gangle that Kaufmo abstracted, but insists that he is fine.
• Double Entendre: Jax refers to Kinger as "Hoo Ha". It can mean a state of commotion and disturbance (refering to Kinger's neurotic personality), but it can also be a slang term for a vagina: meaning that Jax called Kinger a "pussy" as a Stealth Insult without using the word and being censored as a result.
• Downer Ending: Pomni ends up driving herself insane going through the labyrinth of exits, and upon realizing there is truly no way back to her old life, develops a crazed grin on her face as the pilot draws to a close. While Caine manages to patch up Ragatha, Kaufmo is just too far gone and is locked away with other abstracted creatures, who are most likely other players who also "abstracted" in their desperate desire to escape.
• Eaten Alive: Zooble gets swallowed by the Gloink Queen in the pilot episode. When the abstracted Kaufmo lands on the Queen and proceeds to beat her up, she spits out Zooble's parts, and they're shown to be completely fine afterwards, if more annoyed than anything.
• Epic Fail: When the Gloinks carry Zooble's head to feed it to their queen, Kinger comes to their help by attempting to grab it. It results in Kinger's hands being simply taken along, and the Gloink Queen eats Zooble while they curse at Kinger.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Ragatha's demeanor towards Pomni at the end after she has to drag herself towards Caine to be healed implies that she took her new friend abandoning her a second time despite her apology much harder.
• Everyone Has Standards: Caine can only stare in disgusted awe at Bubble licking Pomni's vomit off the floor.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Pomni upon realizing she can't remember who she was previously.
  "My name? Um, my name is, uhh… Uhhhh!? Oh God! [hyperventilates] Why can't I remember my name?! [...] [groans] What's my name?"
• Eye Scream: While Pomni's trying to "take [the] headset off" (presumably referring to the device she used in the real world that transported her to the Circus in the first place), she ends up yanking one of her eyes out of its socket still connected by the nerve endings. It snaps right back into place without any injury once she lets go though.
• Fisher Queen: When she discovers the computer in one of the rooms after the "exit" and starts losing it, the lights appear to start burning.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: If one looks closely, in the hallway on the way to Kaufmo's room, the doors have icons of avatars we haven't seen who have been crossed out. It isn't until the characters enter Kaufmo's room a little while later that we find out why. Likewise, Ragatha's explanation to Pomni on why no one attempts to escape during said walk is given complete context upon opening the door.
• Flash Step: Caine's teleportation (as the thumbnail above shows) looks and feels like this, as Pomni's rolling eyes show every time he stops.
• Flipping the Bird: It gets censored, but Zooble does this in the pilot when attempting to step out of the Gloinks mission.
• Foreshadowing: Kaufmo only appears as a cardboard cutout in the opening, which promptly falls over before a disclaimer states he "did not show up today." It's the first hint that something is not right with the clown.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: When Pomni undergoes a Heroic BSoD with a Thousand-Yard Stare after Ragatha rambles about how they'll all eventually go insane, Jax lightly smacks her face to snap her out of it.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Zooble is fed piece by piece to the Gloink Queen, which Jax assures they'll be fine despite. True to form, the Queen promptly regurgitates them when an abstracted Kaufmo lands on her, no worse for wear.
• Jacob Marley Warning: Kaufmo's fate of becoming abstracted and then sent to the Circus' basement to rot with the other abstracted serves as a demonstration to Pomni, and the audience, exactly what will happen to her or any of her new comrades if (or when) they ever lose their sanity completely in the Circus. It also serves as a very dark warning to Pomni not to hold out false hope that she'll ever find any exit back to the real world.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • He might be condescending about it, but he's not wrong when he tells Pomni if there was an exit in the Digital Circus, all of them would've used it by now.
  • While refusing to help Zooble when they get captured by the Gloinks is what you'd expect from him, he's technically correct that Zooble calling the others "idiots" while being captured is rude and won't make them want to help.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Jax immediately makes a joke at Pomni's expense the moment she enters the Digital Circus, getting trapped as another victim, when she interrupts the show's theme song performance In-Universe. Also counts as his Establishing Character Moment, as it's his first line in the pilot.
  • When leaving the Gloink lair, Jax seemingly pushes Gangle out of the way after offering to let her to go first, to go first instead, for no apparent reason whatsoever other than his own satisfaction.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Enforced and justified. Since the Digital Circus is a videogame-like reality with its own sets of rules, and players can’t remember their true name, the latter can either choose a new name (as long it respects the realm’s family-friendly content, and doesn’t violate copyright laws), or let Caine pick one for them.
• Hope Is Scary: Hope to escape from the circus only has negative consequences. Ragatha says the idea is just an unobtainable goal that will lead to ruin, Kaufmo proving her point by getting abstracted from thinking Caine is hiding an exit. Pomni searching for it causes her to abandon an injured Ragatha and discover it isn't real, making her fate that much more painful to face.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Ragatha starts to severely glitch out after getting attacked by Kaufmo, which causes her a lot of pain.
• In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: Pomni initially believes her entry to the Circus is a dream. Despite Jax reminding her multiple times that this is not the case, she still hopelessly tries to believe it. Needless to say, once she fully realizes it's all real and that she's actually trapped likely forever, she doesn't take it very well.
• Injured Self-Drag: Because Pomni didn't come back for her, Ragatha is forced to drag herself from the room corridor to the hall, despite the pain from the glitching.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • At one point, Jax pulls off one of Zooble's arms and uses it like a backscratcher. A second or two later, Zooble uses that arm to throttle him and pull him to the floor.
  • Immediately after Jax says he only does what he does to see people get hurt or otherwise negatively affected, a Gloink comes by and bops him in the face. His exact words were "(seeing) funny things happen to people".
• Laughing Mad: After Pomni goes through countless "exit" doors and sees a computer and headset on a desk identical to the one that sent her to the digital world in the first place, she starts laughing maniacally.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: This is done in the first few seconds of the episode when Pomni bumps into the gang, triggering the theme tune to slow down to a halt.
• The Load: Jax is barely any help in the Gloinks situation, something Gangle calls him out on.
• Mirror Reveal: After spending most of the episode mostly unaware of what her body has become, Pomni sees her jester’s reflection on a mirror, while she was escaping from the abstracted Kaufmo a second time. From her expression, you can see her as if she is barely trying to not freak out.
• Moment of Weakness: Though Pomni is obviously in a very stressful scenario and headspace and at least tries to be sociable with the other players outside of it, she also ends up abandoning Ragatha in her time of need while she is glitching out and clearly in pain. Twice. While the first time can be excused since an Abstracted Kaufmo is chasing her, she tries to help Ragatha only to have her hand glitch out, and she actually goes back and apologizes while the monster is somewhere else... she then chooses to abandon Ragatha's state and request to find Caine to fix it once she supposedly comes across a way to leave the Digital Circus for good. Needless to say, all Pomni can do after she is sucked back into the circus and Ragatha drags herself over to Caine to be healed is look down in shame and away from Ragatha who also looks away from her in silence.
• Mythology Gag: When Zooble is spat out of the Gloink Queen, Kinger asks if she had to a play in a game show in her stomach, which Zooble treats as just more of Kinger's nonsense, as a reference to one of Gooseworx's earlier works, Little Runmo, where the titular character finds an incongruous televised game show inside of a monster's belly.
• Nice Mean And In Between: When Pomni asks how to leave the circus, Ragatha searches her words to tell her she can't leave, Jax interrupts to say it to her face to drive her insane, and Zooble scolds him before bluntly telling Pomni that the game is her new home because at this point, honesty is the best way to preserve her fragile mind.
• Ninja Prop: After Jax kicks away the last standing bowling pin, a sign with the words "SPARE" floats above where the pins once stood. Jax returns to snap the sign in half on his knee.
• Not So Stoic: Zooble's stoic demeanor breaks when they get pulled apart and captured by the Gloinks, where they express genuine panic at their predicament, followed by annoyance that no one is helping them.
• Prank Gone Too Far: While Ragatha doesn't personally experience said prank onscreen herself, she gets annoyed by Jax using her only fear (centipedes) as part of it when he tells her about leaving centipedes in her room.
• Primp of Contempt: Jax looks at his nails (over his glove, no less) in an unfazed manner while ignoring the Gloink Queen's speech.
• Refusal of the Call: Zooble outright refuses to take part in the Gloink quest... and promptly gets taken away by said creatures, which ironically makes them part of the adventure against their will.
• Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: When Zooble desperately asks for Jax's, Kinger's, and Gangle's help when they're captured by the Gloinks.
  Zooble: Agh! Help me, you idiots!
  Jax: Kinda rude, Zooble. Now I don't wanna help you.
• Rewatch Bonus: Knowing Kaufmo's ultimate fate, you'll notice the audio glitch in one of Ragatha's lines concealed a Last-Second Word Swap.
  Ragatha: [Caine will] be able to fix me up and fi—take care of Kaufmo.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Zooble attempts to do this in the pilot during the Gather the Gloinks adventure, only to be gathered by the Gloinks and forced into the situation anyways.
  • Upon learning Kaufmo has abstracted after undergoing Sanity Slippage, Jax decides to immediately take off and switch to the other adventure instead of having to deal with him.
  • After multiple attempts at speculating the possibility of an exit, Pomni ends up using the exit door she'd sought after to attempt to leave the Circus when pursued by the Abstracted Kaufmo. Then after going through a maze of doors, it turns out to only lead out into the Void and was just a fake exit Caine created to please the players.
• Shower of Awkward: When Pomni is looking around the circus for Caine, one of the rooms that she stumbles into is a bathroom where a single mannequin is taking a bath... and sends a screaming opera mask-face flying at her when it spots her.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: At the end of the episode, Pomni just stares blankly as the reality of her situation sinks in, which gradually morphs into a Broken Smile.
• Twitchy Eye: At the end of the pilot, Pomni's eye twitches, her pupils start to shake, and her mouth contorts into an insane smile once it hits her that she really is stuck in the Digital Circus forever.
• The Un-Smile: The face Pomni makes in the pilot's final scene is a very tortured smile, giving further proof of her Sanity Slippage.
• The Unpronounceable: Her first new name chosen by Caine is "Xddcc" before he decides it's terrible and generates a new one instead — "Pomni."
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Pomni's presence as a new member in the Circus unintentionally develops conflict in the pilot as Ragatha is encouraged to have Pomni meet Kaufmo and Caine is encouraged to create the "Gather the Gloinks" adventure also leading to Zooble getting captured. Meeting Kaufmo leads to Ragatha's avatar getting damaged due to his abstraction and Caine's disappearance for the adventure prevents Ragatha from getting healed until Pomni gets his attention by accidentally entering the Void through the last of a series of "exit" doors.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Pomni vomits on the floor right after Caine takes her back into the tent after giving her a tour.
• What Is Going On?: As a Naïve Newcomer to the Digital Circus, Pomni asks questions about her situation repeatedly since she has no clue what the Digital Circus is about.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: None of the players (not even the four who actually took part to the adventure) did anything of note against the Gloink Queen (the abstracted Kaufmo was the one who beat her up after falling on top of her through the ceiling). Nonetheless, Caine rewards them with a "delicious digital feast" for defeating her. Gangle lampshades it when Jax says the adventure made him hungry.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When Caine offers up an adventure to introduce Pomni to the Circus.
  Caine: Since you're new around here, we're gonna make it a simple, in-house adventure to warm you up to how things work around here!
  Zooble: Wh-?! No! God! I don't want an in-house adventure.